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Hello there-
First and foremost, I want to say thank you. I have turned to these forums for the last few months and have learned so much already. After struggling with doubts about a few choices, I wanted to post here to ask for some advice for our trip next month.

My husband and I are in our late 20s and will be traveling from Sept 22nd - Oct 5th. We were fortunate enough to be provided with free round trip business class airfare on Edelweiss, but are required to fly in/out of Zurich. However, we don't have much of an interest in Zurich since there are so many other wonderful places to visit. We are mainly interested in the B.O. area of Switzerland and the Bavarian porition of Germany. We thought it best to do the "loop" idea to start and end in Zurich. We will be traveling mostly by train, with the exception of having a rental car during our Germany portion. We enjoy scenery/nature, a little adventure, and some relaxing and soaking it all in as well.

Our tenative plans are as follows:

Saturday - Arrive Zurich 10 am. Leave for Lauterbrunnen (our base for B.O) around 2pm. Explore Lauterbrunnen and check into hotel for an early evening.

Sunday, Monday & Tuesday - Gimmelwald, Jungfrau, Trummelbach Waterfalls, Murren
* Need to figure out a way to get to Chur or St. Moritz to do Bernina Express on Wednesday

Wednesday - Bernina Express...Start at Chur or St. Moritz, lunch in Poschiavo, ending in Tirano. We don't have an interest in staying in these areas, mainly just want to do the B.E.
* We would like to go to Venice from here, but we're finding that we may only be able to go back through Milan and then on to Venice. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

Thursday - Venice

Friday - Venice - Night train to Salzburg

Saturday - Salzburg

Sunday - Salzburg/Hallstatt

Monday - Pick up rental car in Munich. Visit Oktoberfest (I have read that one day here is enough). Stay the night somewhere else...rooms were too expensive in Munich.

Tuesday & Wednesday - Germany
* Not sure what areas, but strongly considering Stuttgart and the Black Forest area since we would like to visit the Porsche museum

Thursday - Fussen - Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau Castles

Friday - Leave Fussen early to make 1pm flight out of Zurich

Questions:
Are we trying to do too much? We've scaled our trip back quite a bit, and I would be heartbroken to miss out on some of these areas... but then again I don't want to kick myself later for not slowing down a little.

Does the order make sense? We thought about changing it go to St. Moritz first, then tack on the B.O. at the end to avoid some of the connection issues between the Berner Oberland to the Bernina Express, and Tirano to Venice. My concern is that we may spend an extra day here and there, and I don't want to cut short our time in the B.O. since we are most excited about visiting that area.

If we stick to the current order, do you have any suggestions for getting to the Bernina Express from the Jungfrau area? What about from Tirano to Venice?

Suggestions for a railpass? We considered the 3 country Eurail pass, but the trip from Venice to Salzburg would cost us more than just adding a 4th country (Austria). Also, since we will be doing most of our train travel in Switzerland, would it make more sense to get a Swiss Pass, and make other arrangements for the other train trips? I looked at the prices and wasn't impressed, so I honestly felt like the Eurail would be a better option. Thoughts or experience on this?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I think I'm starting to panic since our trip is 6 weeks away. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Re the Bernina. Am not sure why you are saying you have to "go back through" Milan (will you have been there already?) but yes. You will have to walk from the Rhaetian Railway station in Tirano across a small square to reach the Trenitalia station. You can see one from the other. From there you will need to take the train to Milan (a couple hours) and then from Milan take the train to Venice.

I can tell you from experience the Bernina Express route is filled with spectacular scenery and I would advise you to consider (strongly) getting seats in one of the First Class panorama cars (bigger windows and more room).

Are you planning to drive the car from Fuessen to Zurich? If so you may very well be looking at a hefty drop charge since you would be renting the car in one country and dropping it in another.

Now, one possibility (are you flexible????) would be to use the car to visit Fuessen and the castles FIRST and then drive to Stuttgart. You can get an early train (before 7AM) there to Zurich and be there in about 4 hours (you will have dropped the car in Germany).

It sounds really hectic and you are covering a lot of ground but if you like to travel fast, then that's your style. I think you would have a more relaxing holiday sticking to Switzerland and Germany and leaving Austria and Italy for another trip.

Check sbb.ch/en for Swiss trains. You could also consider the Swiss Half Fare card which gives you half price travel in Switzerland for a month.

I believe that you are underestimating distance and/or train travel times.

Tirano to Venice is a minimum 10 hour trip with 5 changes.

Venice to Salzburg night train either arrives at 04:09 or leaves at 01:13 - take your pick but at least it is only about 6.5 hours.

Fussen to Zurich Airport is almost 6 hours with at least 5 train changes. You have a couple of options, all leaving at 05:00 and arriving at 10:41 - 11:30

As for routing, Fussen should be slotted after Munich, then on to Stuttgart/BF.

Without being almost constantly on the move and having no more than 1 full day to see any particular place except the BO and Venice (after a 10 hour train trip and before a post midnight departure), this is an extremely ambitious itinerary.

I think so. You have some pretty nice destinations overall but you'll be in transit too much of the time. The more miles you travel, the less you see and experience, as a rule, and since you already have some wasted transit time from and back to Zürich, it might be wise to streamline your route a bit.

"we don't have much of an interest in Zurich since there are so many other wonderful places to visit. "We are mainly interested in the B.O. area of Switzerland and the Bavarian porition of Germany."

You're probably right that there's no great reason to hang around Zürich. But the only places I see in your plan that are actually in Bavaria are Munich (for a few hours) and the overtouristed 19th-century palaces in Füssen.

Agree with Dukey1 that if you get a car in Germany (and I'm not clear why you'd want to do this in the first place since you only have 4 nights there in places like Stuttgart, Munich, and Füssen, which are all well served by train) it would be wise to drop it before entering Switzerland unless you want heavy drop-off fees, and it would be wise to do your Germany sightseeing - and your trip to Salzburg/Hallstatt, I think - before moving on to Switzerland.

You could then catch a flight from Venice to Zürich instead of training back north on a night train.

Stuttgart seems like a long way to go for a car museum, but if that's a must, you can get a Munich-Stuttgart ticket for two on the DB (german railways) site for 29€ on October 2. That would probably save you some time and money.

I like the Black Forest but if you want to see Bavaria, you might just lop off that part (and maybe Stuttgart too) as there's plenty closer to Munich to keep you busy. Visit Garmisch and Mittenwald south of Munich for scenery and a handsome Bavarian village. Include Berchtesgaden and the Königssee as outings on your Salzburg trip. Visit the Romantic Road towns of Harburg and Nördlingen, or see the handsome city of Regensburg - its old town is a UNESCO World Heritage site. (BTW, two can ride the rails between the German cities above - and Salzburg too - for 26€ per day on a Bayern ticket daypass: http://www.bahn.com/i/view/GBR/en/prices/germany/laender-ticket.shtml )

You might also toss in an outing from Salzburg to Hohenwerfen Castle in Werfen:

Dukey1 - By back through I meant backtracking...sorry should have clarified. We are definitely flexible and have not made any hotel reservations yet. We wanted to only make a few reservations regardless (mainly just for the cities where we knew it would be more crowded) and then leave things flexible so if we wanted to change things on the fly we could. The rental car will stay in Germany, and will be dropped at our last stop in Germany before heading back to Zurich. Definitely don't want to pay the surcharge!

Dreamon - Would the Half Fare card be better than the Swiss Pass? The prices seem similar since Swiss Pass is offering the 2-1 deal right now, but are there any advantages of having the Half Fare over the Swiss Pass?

Aramis - Believe it or not, we initially had Paris, Rome and Prague on our wishlist...that was before I came here and realized I was out of my mind. We first aimed for night trains so we could save on hotel expenses, but the more we looked at things the more we knew we had to scale things back since we wouldn't leave ourselves enough time to enjoy our first trip to Europe. I'm thinking that we may still need to cut something, but we just can't decide where because all of these places were at the top of our list.

Russ - The Romantic Road was our original reason for opting for the rental car in Germany. Then we started looking into Stuttgart and the Black Forest, and became torn on which area to visit. My husband has always had a fascination with Germany and German cars, so that is why we prefer renting a car versus traveling via train. To see his face on the autobahns of Germany is well worth it to me.

Aramis - I believe this is the routing info Dukey was referring to:

You take the Regio from Tirano to Milano Centrale.
Your journey starts at Tirano on 26.09.12 at 17:10, you arrive at Milano Centrale is at 19:40.
Your journey continues by Eurostar Italia from Milano Centrale to Venezia S. Lucia.
Your journey starts at Milano Centrale at 20:05, you arrive at Venezia S. Lucia is at 22:40.
Summary
The total journey time is: 5:30
This connection runs daily.
The number of changes is: 1

Charnees - We do not have reservations for Oktoberfest yet. We know for sure we do not want to stay the night in Munich because of the crowds and the expense, so we will probably venture elsewhere. Do you think it would be wise to make reservations for tables or in the tents? Can you make reservations for those things?

wrt to Swiss passes, the only way to figure out the best deal is to check point to point prices for your likely itinerary on the Swiss train website and compare them with having a pass. I didn't know that they currently have a 2:1 sale so that makes a difference. I travelled in Switzerland last year and didn't buy any pass at all because it was cheaper to use standard tickets for the journeys I was doing.

I know you're having trouble deciding what to drop but it seems that Venice is a long way out of your way and you'll have hardly any time there anyway.